After thorough examination, NASA managers have decided to suspend the planned March 2016 launch of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission. The decision follows unsuccessful attempts to repair a leak in a section of the prime instrument in the science payload.

The pretty flower shape Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237) is in the constellation of Monoceros (The Unicorn) and is a huge cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the open star cluster (NGC 2244) it’s about 100 light years in diameter and lies approximately 5000 light years away from us here on Earth…Wow, it’s a very pretty area in the night sky!

My images were taken with a Meade 80mm refractor telescope piggybacked on a Meade 10inch LX200 telescope using a Canon 70D camera. Exposures were 10x10 minute lights and 5x10 darks at ISO 1000, stacked in DSS (Deep Sky Stacker) and processed in Photoshop.

The constellation of Monoceros is in between Orion and Canis Major in the night sky, you’ll easily see the lovely open star cluster NGC 2244 with a pair of binoculars…but the Rosette Nebula is very faint, its beauty is best seen in a long exposure photograph :-)